Passion = Truth? How Jeffrey James Francis Ircink Sees The World? I love when people are passionate about something. That surging of emotion is the one honest measure of what truth is. It's a truthful display of how a person really feels about something or someone at that particular moment. That passion IS truth.



About me...

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Greendale, Wisconsin, United States
Ex-producer of THE REALLY FUNNY HORNY GOAT INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM FESTIVAL, playwright, actor, singer, outdoorsman, blogger, amateur photog, observer & bitcher, Beach Boys groupie, Brett Favre fanatic, lover of everything Celtic and forever a member in the Tribe of HAIR. Spent most of my life in the Village of Waterford, a small town just outside of the Milwaukee suburbs. After 12 years in North Hollywood, Bel Air and Culver City, Cali, I moved back to Wisconsin in September 2009. No regrets - of moving to LA OR moving back to WI. Have traveled to Belfast, Ireland, Dayton (OH), Manhattan, Seattle, Cedar Rapids, New York, Miami and Sydney, Australia with my plays. Moved back into the Village of Greendale where I was born. Life is good.

Celtic!

Sunday, August 28, 2011

excerpt from "Reveille!".


One of the prettiest passages I've ever written.

AMANDA
Well if your demeanor were on a higher plain, what would you write about?
(Silence.)
Oh, come now, Catherin. Don’t be such a sour puss. Say something.

CATHERIN
(Wondering.)
I don’t know.
(Reflecting.)
I suppose I’d write about living here in the valley – before the war - when even the faintest of breezes blows in the smell of sassafras blossoms from a mile away and the mockingbirds swoop down on anyone who gets within a hundred yards of their nests.
(Beat)
I’d write about how that dog of yours slouches around so much so you’d think she were dead to the world except for when she nips at the honey bees flying about her head.

AMANDA
Don’t you dare say one unkind word about Molly. She’d sooner chew off her leg than hurt a flea.

CATHERIN
I’d write about our farm, and how you’re scared of feeding the chickens and how one day –

AMANDA
That ain’t true!

CATHERIN
That’s “not” true and you are too. And how one day you proposed we eat the Rhode Island Red and Plymouth Rock chickens as they were most certainly Yankee-bred and would do irreparable harm to a Southerner’s palate. I’d tell of midnight walks along Pope’s Head Road, lit up by the moon – like a postcard...
(She stops ironing.)
...where you can hear the rippling and splashing of Little Mountain Run in the dark as she snakes down and around through the Shenandoah Valley, and the horned owl joins the bullfrog and the crickets in a symphony that only God could compose. Or the lonesome whistle of the Blue Ridge Railway...clickety-clackety – reminding me there’s a whole nuther world to explore beyond this valley.
(Beat)
To drink that all in - now the world’s filled with nothing but suffering because of some men’s war and I fear I may wake to a rifle barrel stuck in my gut – or worse. Oh I still smell sassafras occasionally but it’s –
(Beat)
– everything I cherish here has been smothered by war. The trains bring men into town, filling our streets with blue troops and gray troops marching off to kill one another. The air is filled with smoke and fire. The Yankees’ blockade stopped Little Mountain Run from rippling and splashing. How many people have we known moved away or killed? This simple life of ours which I derived so much joy is no more.
(Beat)
I used to take pleasure in the rain – a steady, long, slow rain. It washed the earth clean and made everything smell reborn, like fresh laundry brought in outta the wind. The only rain that falls now brings with it the stench of death and the streets run with the blood of young men who are lost forever. And I’m afraid that everything will change and I’ll forget what it was like.
(She goes back to ironing. Embarrassed.)
I’m rambling.

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